Title: Breaking
Pairing: Daniel/Vala
Category: Angst/Romance
Spoilers: Season 10 in general
Summary: They like the rain.
A/N: This is what happens when I think to myself that there is a large amount of Vala!whumping in Season Ten, (ie. multiple mind tampering scenarios, a daughter bent on taking over the galaxy, family issues galore, and did I mention that whole "threat of impending doom" thing?)
So this is my first finished Daniel/Vala fic. It was written a couple months ago and posted to the Daniel/Vala community at Livejournal, but I never got around to putting it up here. Un-betaed but minorly tweaked from the original.
Disclaimer: They are so not mine, otherwise the movies would simply be an hour and a half of Daniel and Vala being cute..
Nobody sees the tears that fall when it's raining. That's why she saves up her tears until then, because she can stand outside on top of the mountain and say she loves the rain, and give a stunning grin that doesn't reach her eyes and be left alone; because no-one could possibly know that she's grieving. Grieving for the family she wishes had cared more, for the child that isn't hers that she loves anyway no matter what she says, for the things that will never happen, no matter what foolish hopes she professes, and she thinks maybe she's grieving a little for herself. For the small part of her that is gone, the part that's been gone for so long she doesn't even remember what it felt like. She thinks it might have been important so she puts up a wall of smiles and innuendos over the empty space and thinks no one is the wiser and that means it's alright.
Sometimes he joins her when it's raining.
Those are the times when she pauses, not wanting to look because looking would mean acknowledging, and she's pretty sure that if anyone would get it, he would. She's just not sure she's ready to give that secret up.
But it's a familiar twinge, to want (need) look at him, and it wins every single time because she eventually directs a questioning gaze his way, only to receive a now familiar answer.
"I like the rain," he says, shrugging his shoulders far too innocently, and for just a moment it's there in the small smile he gives her that he knows her secret and feels it himself, for reasons that are both different and the same (they both silently grieve for what they'll never have, and for the victory that seems less certain every day, and for everything they've lost.).
It feels like dying softly, but from the inside, and she already knows what death feels like all too well. She wonders what life would be like if she didn't but she's just not that imaginative anymore. She wonders about a lot of things when she's out here in the rain (alone, but not really alone at all), letting tears and rain mingle on her face without censure. This is the only place where she can accept the fact that she hasn't been a dreamer for a long time. Back there, inside the confines of gray walls where duty and honor and going out in a blaze of glory live, she's the dreamer, the one with crazy ideas and smiles to spare. Out here she can admit that even though she swore as a child she would never be broken, she is.
She thinks he might be a little broken too. It's not in what he says so much as it is in his eyes, which makes them more alike than either of them would like to admit, but so long as it's never spoken, they can both go on pretending. It's easier that way and god knows they're tired of fighting.
When he silently comes up behind her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, she stiffens, fighting the change for a moment because it means breaking down a wall she won't be able to put back up- they won't be able to go back- then gives up, pressing her face into his chest and crying broken tears against his heart.
There's a realization hidden somewhere in those few moments. They're both a little broken but they fit together.
They like the rain.